


The true phantom

by captainhurricane



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: 1st person, Character Study, Gen, major phantom pain spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 13:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4837313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world doesn't need Snakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The true phantom

**Author's Note:**

> i am sadfacing about Venom so here's something. Once again, don't read if you haven't finished playing Phantom Pain. Just don't. Don't come running to me if you get spoiled.

I am Big Boss. I earned my title when I stopped a nuclear strike and killed a traitor. No, that’s not right- I was Naked Snake when I completed Operation Snake Eater in the sixties and I felt. I felt. Triumphant. Victorious. No, that’s- I never- Their salutes meant nothing to me. The woman I- I?- admired, respected, loved was dead and forever branded a traitor to her country. And I felt nothing. I was dead from the moment the bullet left the gun and ended her life. I was dead. I am dead.

 

I am Big Boss but I am also not him. Am I? I didn’t do Operation Snake Eater. I didn’t face the Cobra Unit in battle. I didn’t meet Major Ocelot in Tselinoyarsk or co-operate with another spy, what was her name- I am- I am- what is my name? His name is John and he is Big Boss. He killed his mentor but rejected his country and the rest of the world for endless war. What is my name?

 

I remember the hospital. The confusion. The doctor’s face is blurry to me but his words aren’t. The dull ache of the shrapnel digging into my skull. Would it kill me?

I remember the bandaged man, his voice somehow familiar but his face hidden. Call me Ishmael, he had said.

I remember the hospital but it’s all a blur. But I remember the deaths.

 

And he let it happen. He wanted it to happen.

 

I was created in his image, my old identity tossed away for his use and I let it happen. (Who am I?) I did his work for him. I rescued Commander Miller- no, Kaz, call him Kaz- and listened to his desperate, stuttered words and only later knew they weren’t directed at me. Because Kazuhira Miller would go on waiting for his boss and listen to the lie that is me.

 

I forget who I was. I saw the photo in the hospital and couldn’t recognize myself. That man is in the past, now I am created to be nothing but a shadow of the real thing.

 

I don’t mind. It doesn’t matter anymore that I was somebody else, that it wasn’t actually my hand on the gun that killed The Boss- my gaze that witnessed the Peace Walker. It doesn’t matter. As far as the world knows, I am Big Boss. I am everything he is, I have his anger, his silence. I have his memories, his skills. The love and loyalty of his comrades and the respect of the soldiers I recruited.

 

”Would you follow me? All the way to hell?”

 

A chorus of yes. Fists in the air. We are of one body and one mind, us Diamond Dogs.

 

X

 

Hell is our heaven. I speak to the ever-growing army and know they would die a hundred times over for me. For us. For the real Big Boss hands deep in his own work, hidden from the eyes of the world. I would call him a coward if I didn’t understand. He is me, after all.

 

I create Outer Heaven on the bones of Diamond Dogs, surround myself with metal and armour.

 

Kazuhira Miller had walked away from me years earlier, had spat on my face because the truth had carved a deeper hole inside him than anything. I didn’t ask him to return. I didn’t force him to return. I don’t need a dog whose loyalty has wavered. But perhaps a part of me grieves- as long as it was, Kaz was by my side, even if his loyalty was towards the real one and not me. I got my (the real one’s) revenge on our enemy with his hand on my arm. Perhaps if he hadn’t been left in the dark he wouldn’t have let his anger eat away his soul, leaving nothing but bitterness.

 

Even Ocelot, the torturer, the spy, the one with silver on his hair and his tongue leaves. He’s part of something bigger, perhaps. A part of the real Big Boss’ plans. I am, after all, nothing but a phantom. I have nothing to offer when Ocelot’s loyalty hadn’t ever truly been mine.

 

x

 

”One more mission. Right, boss?”

 

I know death and defeat is coming for me in the form of his (my) clone child, perhaps getting closer to the heart of my fortress even now.

If it makes the world easier to live in, if it gets us any closer to peace, I will gladly die in the hands of another Snake.

 

Big Boss doesn’t have to tell me what he wants me to do. I know what I must do, for the sake of all the comrades I have lost, for the sake of moment when I was reborn as a legend. For the sake of getting closer to a world where this doesn’t have to happen. If it means I must die, so be it.

I can hear him now. A punch. A pained grunt. A chokehold. Quick footsteps. The hiss of a door as it opens.

 

”You,” hisses the voice that could have come out of my mouth when I was his age. Perhaps his son will be the one to end it. I turn to face him; to see that he’s unarmed but his face is fierce, his features sharp.

 

A snake has slithered into Outer Heaven, a finger on the trigger of a bomb. He’s a heir of his own fucked up legacy, a descendant of endless war but could it be- could it be that he isn’t much like his father after all?

 

”Are you ready?”


End file.
